Modernists and the Synod: Pride

With the Synod of the Family looming only two weeks away, it is crucial that we spend this time focusing all of our energy and prayers on this event. Never in the history of the Church have we been in such a crisis as we are today. Bishops, Cardinals, and even the Pope are speaking openly about the need for Church teaching to change. The majority of prelates in attendance at this Synod is in favor of allowing the divorced, remarried, and openly homosexual to receive the Holy Eucharist, without amending their lives. This is a truly wicked and evil perversion and scandalous to be hearing from those who have been ordained to safeguard Christ’s teachings with their very lives.

After spending some time with the Catechism of Modernism, a catechism written using Pope St. Pius X’s encyclical Pascendi Domini Grecis, few paragraphs stuck out to me as being related to what we are currently witnessing in the Church today, especially what will be present at the Synod of the Family. Over the course of the next two weeks leading up to the Synod, as well as the two weeks of the Synod, I would like to continually bring these nuggets of gold into focus, and apply them to the statements and actions we are witnessing coming out of Rome.

Q. Can you describe that pride which fills the Modernist?

A. It is pride which fills Modernists with that confidence in themselves and leads them to hold themselves up as the rule for all, pride which puffs them up with that vainglory which allows them to regard themselves as the sole possessors of knowledge, and makes them say, inflated with presumption, ‘We are not as the rest of men’, and which, to make them really not as other men, leads them to embrace all kinds of the most absurd novelties; it is pride which rouses in them the spirit of disobedience, and causes them to demand a compromise between authority and liberty; it is pride that makes of them the reformers of others, while they forget to reform themselves, and which begets their absolute want of respect for authority, not excepting the supreme authority.

At the Synod we see these prelates are confident in themselves and hold themselves up as the rule for all. Walter Cardinal Kasper, for example, has been touted by Pope Francis as having “serene theology” and has even been commented as having done “theology from one’s knees”. Pope Francis has made Cardinal Kasper one of his right-hand men at the Synod. Cardinal Kasper believes that the teaching on administering Holy Communion to adulterers regardless of sexual orientation should be changed. So confident is this Prince of the Church, that he has gone on record as saying that he “speaks for the Pope”.

Cardinal Kasper lambasted the African bishops and Cardinals who have been defending the Church’s teaching by saying that they “should not tell us too much what we have to do”. Through this attitude, we see that the Cardinal has puffed himself up and regards himself and like-minded prelates as the sole possessors of knowledge. By his words, he views himself and his companions as not being like the rest of men, and through this erroneous thinking has allowed them to embrace all kinds of absurd novelties.

When those faithful bishops and Cardinals present at the Synod of the Family in 2014 cited Pope St. John Paul II’s teachings on the family, the response given was that the sainted Pope’s teachings were too traditional. At the conclusion of the Synod, Pope Francis stated that “God isn’t afraid of new things” implying that those in opposition to the proposals put forth by the Synod to allow adulterers to receive the Holy Eucharist are not following what God wants. Pope Francis also stated that we can’t be too strict, nor too lax, but we need to find a compromise. Here we see an example of finding a compromise between authority (God’s law) and liberty (give adulterers Our Lord’s Body and Blood).

Finally, in all of this pride, we see their refusal to conform themselves to the will of God, and to the teachings of Him and His Spotless Bride, the Church. They seek the authority and approval of man and society, all along, ignoring the approval of the One Who they swore to serve, God.

We must pray that God’s law be upheld at this Synod of the Family. Read that sentence again. We are at a point in the history of the Church, that we must pray that the Church upholds Her teachings. Let that sink in. We can no longer trust the majority of the prelates to uphold Church teaching.